| Half of the aircraft engine will be made in Russia Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&W) Corporation presented an engine design for the Russian regional jet yesterday in Moscow. The regional aircraft itself, also known to specialists under the abbreviated designation RRJ, also still exists only in draft form. An agreement on its joint development was signed last year by the Russian aircraft manufacturing companies Ilyushin and Sukhoi with the American corporation Boeing. P&W, according to the company's vice president for international business development Joseph Torchetti, expects to win a future tender for the supply of a power plant for the RRJ. To solve this problem, a representative delegation of Canadian engine builders settled in Moscow for a week and a half.
The projected PW-800 engine, like the regional aircraft, is expected to be created using broad international cooperation. P&W, which has been working on this engine for two years, wants to involve the Perm design bureau Aviadvigatel and the German company MTU Aero Engines (a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler) in this matter. By 2004, the engine should be ready for certification under Canadian, American and Russian regulations simultaneously, Mr. Torchetti said. And in 2006 it is planned to launch its serial production. Moreover, as the Canadian guest emphasized, the production of “at least 50%” of the PW-800 components will be located in Russia.
Deputy General Designer of Aviadvigatel Alexander Semenov emphasized yesterday that for his company this will be the first experience of equal participation in the international development of a modern engine. In Soviet times, the bureau, which has now become JSC Aviadvigatel, for obvious reasons, functioned completely independently from its Western colleagues. In recent years, Perm residents, together with P&W, have been working on the PS-90A2 engine. However, as Mr. Semenov said, this is still a modification of an engine that was created earlier, and quite a long time ago.
There may still not be complete parity in work on the PW-800. MTU Aero Engines vice president of marketing and sales Jochim Hildermann said yesterday that his company would like to increase its participation in the project to 40%. If PW maintains its participation at the level of about half (which would be logical for the parent company of the project), then there will be very little left for the share of Perm designers. However, negotiations on the distribution of roles in the project are still far from completed, as are contacts with potential buyers of the power plant - the Boeing/Sukhoi/Ilyushin consortium. Mr Torchetti confirmed yesterday that P&W had not yet made a formal offer to them. In his opinion, this is completely normal at this early stage of the project. In the same way, he is not embarrassed by the fact that there is no RRJ aircraft on which the future engine could be installed. "We've already created a lot of engines for airplanes that once existed only on paper," Mr. Torchetti said. An alternative “consumer” for the PW-800, in his opinion, could be the ARJ-21 aircraft being developed in China. Although participation in the Russian “regional” remains a priority goal for P&W.
To achieve this goal, they will have to compete with the Russian JSC Saturn and the French company Snecma, which are jointly designing (for the RRJ) their own SM146 engine. Mikhail KUKUSHKIN |
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